


One-True-Love

by fresne



Category: Little Mermaid (1989)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-08
Updated: 2011-05-08
Packaged: 2017-10-19 04:23:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/196833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Leira found her One-True-Love. An adventure brought on by mother's day.</p><p>Or what if the main character of the little mermaid were the daughter of Ursula/Echidna/Tiamat/etc. hijinks ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One-True-Love

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure how to tag this in that this is sort of a twist on the Little Mermaid (Ariel=Leira, but you know backwards) and Kelpie folklore. So, um, yeah, her true love is kind of nasty, but Leira can take care of herself.
> 
> The following inspiration for this work and inspiration for my dialogue, where I am not directly quoting, because apt quotes are cool:
> 
> Can't say as I remember quoting, but if I did and I haven't attributed, let me know and I'll add it.

"Okay, seriously, my One-True-Love clearly isn't showing." Leira tapped her brush against her cheek and decided that she was annoyed, but that she wouldn’t hold this slight against her One-True-Love. He was probably just lost. Her mother said that men had terrible senses of direction, which was generally followed by a long story about some sailor or another, which Leira ignored so she could retain her sanity points for her next roll. Anyway, he probably had lost his compass. And possibly couldn’t hear so great, because she’d come out to this rock every day for years in both good and bad weather, and he hadn’t hear her singing about her One-True-Love, aka him. Possibly he was stuck somewhere in the land. That happened to people there. They got stuck.

Anyway, Leira had always thought that the land was terribly mysterious and bright and entirely unexplored, and therefore quite wonderful. So she swam to the shore and turned her tail into legs. Her mother was a bit of a scholar among other things and had taught Leira how.

Leira had never gone by herself onto the land, which was why it was mysterious and unexplored, but had little to do with why it was so bright.

She walked along the soft river bank that led away from the sea and it was wonderful. There was sand and it was dry. There was dirt and it was also dry. There were birds, which flew much like fish, only in air and not in water and perhaps weren’t much like fish at all. What with being Aves and not Ichthyes.

In any case, there was a lot of walking. Which was fun at first. What with the walking. Then boring. Then her feet hurt, which was unfair of them. But she was determined and kept going like a brave little turtle, which also sometimes walked on land. She walked until she came to a place where there were no birds and the air was quiet, but for the sound of her slow – what with her feet hurting – steps in the sand. Since she was getting a mite starving, she was glad to see a tree thick with small red fruit. She plucked some fruit and ate it. It totally wasn't poisonous. So that worked out and it was fairly tasty. The one dark spot was she almost broke a tooth on the hard seed in the middle. She spat out the seed and was pleased to see it splash in the river.

She heard something and turned. A creature stood on the other side of the tree. It looked a little like a Hippocampus, but with dripping white fur and red coals for eyes. It rolled said glowing eyes and whickered. Then for whatever non-hippocampus reason, it lay down on the ground and waited. She knelt down beside it and pulled her fingers through the wet silk of its mane and traced the patterns in the pearly shells covering the ends of its feet.

In that her feet were seriously killing her, she climbed onto the creature's back, as she had so often done with the dolphins and whales when they passed her mother's palace on their endless journeys.

The creature sort of scrambled to its feet and reared up on its hind legs, but Leira did not fall, because she was awesome at like that.

When it found that it could not throw her, the creature ran. Slowly at first, then faster, and faster, until the landscape was a green blur. The creature ran so fast it seemed fly, which was fairly awesomesauce. It ran over the lazy bends in the river and then over the white rushing waters. The spray barely touched its sweating hide. Not even the salmon swimming to get it on in the Northern lakes could match their speed, which it should be noted again was totally awesome.

Leira watched the great mountains flow around them and the sky grew dark and then bright again before the creature slowed to a stop. She slid to the ground, tired and now her feet had fallen asleep. They hurt like pins and needles when she stood on them. Blistered pins and needles. She decided somewhat arbitrarily that feet kind of sucked. Whatever. It had been a most wonderific sort of non-specific period of time and Leira was tired. She yawned and lay down with her head upon the creature's body. She quickly fell asleep, listening to the quick beat of the creature's heart.

She dreamt that her mother was combing her hair and when she awoke she saw an absofreaking gorgeous man looking down at her. His skin was white as the underbelly of a whale and his eyes were green as the sea, and so deep she metaphorically flew up into them and drowned, and/or possibly were gem colored, but with a cool light display underneath that made them glow. Or perhaps both. She also may have muttered under her breath, "About time."

Over her breath, she said, "Are you my One-True-Love?"

He smiled and showed his small sharp teeth. "Why, yes. I have come to take you to my home."

Leira laughed to be so happy and he took her hand and pulled her towards the quiet lake. When they reached the edge, he shoved her under the water where he held her for a long time. She smiled to think that he knew her so well, and so quickly. She shivered at his touch, but longed to be held closer to him. She pulled him down into the water and kissed him, which seemed to surprise him. Perhaps women were not so forward up here in the air, which was kind of sad. Her mother said she should never be afraid to let a man know how she felt, but that generally had to do with cyclones, so Leira wasn't sure if it applied.

In any case, he said, "Come with me to my house and I will serve you dinner." Her stomach rumbled, so perhaps food and then wild sexing was the right order. He led her around the lake until they came to a charming little cottage made of bones that seemed to grow out of the lotus roots.

He said, "Welcome to my palace." Which, okay, Leira thought was maybe just a tiny bit, um, pretentious. What with it being a cottage. Her mother lived in a living palace of nacre that constantly grew and shaped itself into new curls. So Leira knew what a palace was supposed to look like. But maybe things were different here on land. Just in case, she nictated through a few glamour membranes. Yeah, he had some sort of glamour on his house to make it look like a palace, but he wasn't half as handsome when she looked at him that way. So she didn't.

Inside his house was as delightful as the outside. She clapped her hands and did a small and somewhat pained dance of delight. The bone walls were lined with little bone cages full of a wide variety of birds. She decided right then and there that she would learn everything there was to know about them from their Class to their Species, because clearly birds were very important to her One-True-Love.

She was in the middle of a tangential thought on taxonomy when her One-True-Love offered her red wine in a skull cap, which truth be told was a little awkward as a wine glass, but seeing as he was a bachelor, she was inclined to overlook the matter. He raised his own skull cap to her and said, “To true love.”

The birds in the cages sang really loudly then. It was like a really annoying chorus.

Leira ignored them and swallowed her wine. It tasted strange and made her feel funny. Kind of feathery, but she had no intention of becoming a bird when their was true-loving to be had. But she did not want to insult her One-True-Love by not drinking his wine. So she turned it to water-of-life in her mouth with a little spell that her mother had taught her when she was just a little girl and resisted eating her vegetables.

He watched her very closely for some time. He seemed puzzled and got the cutest little furrow in the ridges between his pretty ocean-gem-glowing eyes.

Leira wondered when her One-True-Love was going to kiss her and get on with either dinner or sexy fun time. Her hand flew to her mouth - not literally, but it went really fast - she realized that she’d committed a major misstep. Huge. Ginormous even. She decided then and there never to tell her mother, who had always told to ask this question first. She said, "So, um, I forgot to ask, so sorry, I’m normally like this, what’s your name?"

He smiled and idly picked up knife from the dining table and said, "I have no name, my sweet. I am your One-True-Love," and he stabbed her in the heart with his knife or rather he stabbed where her heart would have been had she not been the habit of keeping it in an ivory box at her waist. It was a little trick that she’d learned from her mother and it made a wonderful accessory. Her mother kept her heart inside a box, inside of another box, inside of a larger box, inside a salmon, inside of a carp, inside of a shark, inside of a larger shark, inside of a whale, inside of an electric eel that swam in her mother’s hair. It should be mentioned that the eel was larger on the inside than the outside. Also, her mother had a lot of hair.

Leira was very depressed and considered weeping perfect tears that would – of course – turn into diamonds, so there was a chance for nice accessories. Or possibly pulling a mountain down into the sea, but that was only fun for a few minutes and then there was one less mountain a lot of flotsam and jetsam everywhere.

In any case, that didn’t resolve the issue of a knife. In her chest. Leira looked down. “A knife! I mean, okay, maybe the spear of Longinious or the Pearl at the Heart of the Sea, but a steak knife. It’s not even a nice knife. Seriously, you suck at being a One-True-Love.”

He tried to strike with hands or something equally lame, but she’d had enough of this noise and turned him to stone.

She pulled out the knife and tapped it against her cheek and considered life and making omelets out of desiccated eggs. True fact, if you leave the egg of the great soul turtle in the back grotto too long, it completely dries out and isn't good for much of anything.

Just then, a plain bird sang a song that made her think of rain and waves and whales. And she said, “Um, could you repeat that." The bird did, but since she didn't speak a word of bird, it didn't really help. But given the wine, it was kind of obvious. She kicked the statue, “I’m not even your first true love. You serial True-Loveamist!”

She let the birds out of their cages and turned them all back into girls. As they milled around and were a bit hysterical, which was understandable. Leira sang a few octaves to get their attention, put her hands on her hips and said, “Okay, we need to talk. Clearly I need to fill you in on some basic life skills.” Her stomach rumbled.

The woman who had been the plain bird with the beautiful voice said, “Are you hungry, I could make dinner?”

Leira nodded and considered revising the parameters of her One-True-Love search. In any case, they sat down to a dinner of fish and lotus roots and Leira passed on a few things that her mother had taught her. This went on long into the night. And there may have been some water-of-life consumed. And some toasting. And much kicking of the statue.

In the early hours of the morning, Leira, who may have been a bit tipsy said, “I love you guys.”

The women, from Alice, the former nightingale – aka plain bird – to Mina the mina bird, to Zina the former dove, they all said, “We love you too.” There were tears. Some of which turned into diamonds. It’s also sad to say that they all were a bit hungover the next day. But no one had done anything silly the night before. Well, except for when Leira turned some lotus blossoms into clown fish, but that was it. Oh, and the glass mountain. But no, seriously, no one did anything they regretted.

And they all had some keepsake diamonds. Which was certainly better than staying a bird in the not-palace of a serial not-True-Loveamist.

Leira said goodbye to her new friends, including Alice, who promised to write by way of letters in bottles, and Leira dived into the lake and swam home by way of a great many lakes. She went very fast and admittedly did have a slight misadventure with a very startled bear, but that went fine eventually.

When she reached her mother’s palace, her mother said, “How was your adventure?" because her mother always knew when she had an adventure. It was a mother thing.

Leira spun in the water and said, "Kind of wonderful." Then she hugged her mother and petted the electric eel, which gave her a friendly buzz, and said, “Thank you.”

Her mother patted her with four separate tentacles. “What for?”

Leira hugged her mother tighter. Shrugged into the hug. “For being you.” It wasn’t One-True-Love, but it kinda-sort-of-was.

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


End file.
